After Ali Safavi graduated with a university engineering degree, he began his career in the life science and health care industry where later, he said, a lightbulb moment would give him the idea to start his own company.
It happened while he was setting up an automation platform in a lab and noticed large quantities of plastic consumables in a nearby biohazard bin being discarded after only one use.
“I saw that as a problem, as an unsustainable practice. I couldn’t stop thinking there has to be a better way,” said Safavi, founder, president and CEO of Richmond biotech firm Grenova. “Why should plastics be thrown away especially if they’re the high-quality plastic being used within the industry? What if there was an automated system that could clean, sterilize and enable the industry to reuse?”
Safavi began researching automated systems that could clean, sterilize and enable reuse of these plastics. He quickly found such a system didn’t exist and in 2014 founded sustainable…
Read the full story from the Washington Business Journal.
